Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: Those were the days

From: Jess Nevins ( jjnevins@ix.netcom.com)
Date: 08 Sep 2000


Juri Nummelin wrote:

> tOn Thu, 7 Sep 2000 jjnevins@ix.netcom.com wrote:
>
> > I'm afraid I don't see how that follows. I don't think, either,
> > that Chandler felt that the character's words weren't worth quoting,
> > so much as feeling constrained by The Rules. And even if the
> > character wasn't significant enough to be quoted, I don't see how
> > that establishes aesthetic grounds for evaluating language.
>
> It wasn't the rules, it was Chandler himself, the English-bred
> aesthetic, who confessed he'd never mastubated because he had been
> taught not to. How on earth could this man have written "Motherfucking
> asshole"? Chandler hated James M. Cain for being vulgar (I wrote
> "bulgar" twice), I just wonder what he would've said of someone like
> Ellroy.

Okay, so Chandler didn't like swearing. Still doesn't mean that the lack-of-swears approach is necessarily the superior. In this day and age it's certainly not more realistic.

jess

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